The Pinnacle Warrior

Astrid bristled, and, for the first time in a long time, didn’t even try to hold back her rage. All thoughts of diplomacy left her, all potential for polite interaction flew from her mind. She pushed mana into Alacrity and Fortitude, as well as to her helmet to protect her mind. Given that she had already spent so much mana in the fight against the vampires and had had very little time to recover, she considered using Body to recover her mana, but instead, just threw herself with a scream at the Kin who had spoken.

She supposed it was probably the same one that had fought against the Hiveguard, but instead of thinking about it, her hammer simply whipped through the air at his head. He raised his paw to contemptuously brush aside her attack, underestimating her strength and Power. She internally cursed herself for not using Spectre Burst as his carelessness was repaid in the audible breaking of bones. Astrid could see as he activated a Skill to strengthen himself, but it was too late for the injury he had already sustained. With a whine and a growl, the bear-like man raised both hands. Astrid continued the attack, spending even more mana to fill her greaves and keep herself from flying around like an uncontrollable child.

Taking one step forward, Astrid continued the attack, feeling her mana reserves drop below half and continue plummeting. Despite not having taken any hits, Astrid used her second charge of Body to restore her mana. She swung her hammer once more at her enemy, but was forced to retreat back behind her shield’s cover as he countered.

Having seen what his claws could do, Astrid pushed plenty of mana into her shield to fortify it as the four parallel tears in the air smashed against her defenses. Even with her equipment Skill working in tandem with the Dungeon Silver and her mana, Astrid felt the power behind that Skill. It cut into her reinforced armor, and she fought to keep her shield from sustaining permanent damage. Obviously, her enemy was the finisher of the party. As his attacks continued, Astrid quickly compartmentalized his Class as some sort of a pugilist. His fighting style flowed from one combo to the next, his fists and claws both striking heavily as he roared.

Something about that roar was obviously a Skill, and Astrid was grateful she had spent the mana to protect her mind. Even with her preparations, she felt her stability sway, but she held her ground, and, after an attempted heavy blow from the Kin, struck back with an uppercut.

This time, the Kin was ready for her and raised both fists to protect himself as a bloody aura covered his arms. Unlike before, though, Astrid pushed the deadly mana that made Spectre Burst into her hammer. The deep red energy from her foe fought to restrain her attack, but to no avail. Her hammer pierced through the several centimeters of glowing mana to make contact with his arm. As soon as contact was made, the Kin’s eyes went wide and he howled in pain. Astrid watched as his skin sloughed off and his fearless aura faded. The energy crawled up his arm and, as another Kin rushed forward to minister to their wounded leader, the fur that covered his arm fell away and showed previously dark, healthy skin turning gray.

With that single strike, the posturing and the pride fell away. The Kin party fell out of their painfully overconfident stances and instead hunched forward and rushed into battle. Astrid watched as the healer pulled back their leader and pushed a thick, golden energy into the frontliner she had been fighting. As his body was infused with that light, his agonized groans and writhing faded to whimpers. Astrid tried to continue to watch what was happening there, but the other three members of the enemy party engaged in battle and forced her attention back. Their frontliner was the first to lumber forward, her body transforming into that of a four or five meter long bear. Her entire body bristled with thick, long fur, and when Astrid struck back at her, the fur itself managed to turn away her blow. Each strand of hair was made of a stone-like substance, and it crackled as it cushioned the blow struck against the frontliner.

The fur fragments flew back at Astrid’s face, flying with a supernatural speed and strength. They shrieked against her armor, but couldn’t manage to pierce through as the bear threw her head back and roared. The challenge, like the roar of the Kin’s leader, was a Skill that pulled the party’s attention to their bulky, tough enemy.

“Sorry, guys!” Astrid called out to her party as they were forced to engage in the fight due to her rage.

“They tried killing one of ours,” Felix growled as he smashed into the side of the rampaging bear. “They’ll find no mercy from me.”

His axe fought to pierce through the female Kin’s hide as Astrid turned her attention to the other two enemies approaching. One seemed to be a mage of some sort, dipping their forearms up to the elbows in the earth beneath them before ripping their arms back out. In that brief moment, he had coated both arms in thick stone. When he swiped at Astrid and she dodged back, more of that same stone sloughed off of him to make a whip that curled around her shield. Astrid braced herself, but still had her bell rang. The stone smashed heavily into the helmet right above her left ear. She maintained a steady stance, but counted herself lucky that Muti threw herself at the mage with a snarl of rage before the earth mage could continue to press the attack.

“Cowards receive death! Insufficient honor! Deceivers!” Her shouts rang out, but were swallowed up by the forest of barren trees that surrounded them. Astrid saw as Vital Strike led the Ambusher’s blade to cut through a weak point in the male’s magical armor. Just like that, he lost his left hand and the bottom half of his forearm. He disengaged and a stone wall appeared between him and Muti as he yowled in agony. She started to jump over to finish the attack, but a forest of spikes appeared on the wall and shot out in a deadly rain. With the deadly attack threatening, Muti jumped to the side and avoided the worst of it.

“Stay together! Don’t let them outnumber you!“

Fortunately, the golden haired woman heeded Astrid‘s command and jumped back. Astrid stepped forward and hunched down behind her shield as she pushed more of her mana into it, allowing Muti to take shelter behind her. The stones continued to fall against her shield as Astrid’s mana dropped precipitously. She grunted, paying less attention to the maimed mage, instead of looking at the final of the five, who hadn’t attacked yet.

She, unlike the rest of her party, carried a staff. Different from every other piece of equipment that Astrid had seen, it wasn’t carved or well tended, but instead looked to be a root that’d been pulled directly out of the dirt. It was a gnarled, twisting thing with small, feather thin roots, and, as they were supplied with mana, those roots sprouted and dug into the ground before Astrid’s eyes. The mage obviously continued doing something, but the Human party had no way of telling what it was until Skandr called out from behind, “Inbound roots from below!”

Astrid cursed and forced herself to pull back as a forest of roots as thick as her thigh fought to bind her. As soon as she and Muti exited their reach, the roots turned to Felix, who whipped his axe through the air to cut the tendrils at the base. The female who’d transformed into a bear disengaged and retreated as Felix was forced to turn his attention away from her. Astrid gathered herself as she watched the bear’s escape, her blood trailing on the ground as the fight came to a brief lull.

“I say we keep going, kill them, so they can’t come back another time,” Astrid spoke without taking her eyes from the Kin. A pit developed in her stomach as she suggested the wholesale murder of five people, but she tamped down the disquiet as it grew within. Before anybody else could give an additional thought, Muti perked up before she gestured to the air behind their party.

“Even more vampires come. Do not press the attack on the Kin if they try to escape. We can not fight on two fronts and the vampires will not hold back.”

Astrid growled in displeasure, but didn’t disagree as, with a few meters of separation, the bear-like people all fled into the forest. The root mage continued to sprout more twisting vines between themselves and the Humans, but when they realized that they weren’t being pursued, even Astrid could hear as their enemies began fleeing faster instead of evaluating when they would find some additional opportunity to strike back.

“Muti, more than keeping an eye on more vampires,” Astrid commanded as she turned around to face the approaching flock of beasts, “I want you to keep an eye on any approaching parties. I don’t care if they’re Human, Barbarian, Kin, or otherwise. Anything comes towards us, you need to know before they can do anything. Do that more than fighting”

There wasn’t any audible response, but Astrid knew to trust her friend and pushed Felix forward. He rolled his shoulders as he settled back in position to kill the vampires. Even as he tried to relax himself, his rage was clear in the set of his shoulders and the aggression of his movements. As the first vampires made themselves known, Felix did something quite out of character and jumped into the air several meters to get closer to the main body of assembled vampires. The closest monsters swooped in to attack him as he shouted out to activate Guardian’s Wrath. He plummeted to the ground with a thunderous crash as the vampires swarmed around him.

“Give me one moment,” he growled as he pushed an excessive amount of Power-aligned mana into his axe. He spun around in tandem with Whirling Blades as a half dozen vampires died with that opening attack. Astrid could see the mana exhaustion creeping up on the party’s frontliner, and she threw herself into destroying the ranks of vampires as well. Despite her exhaustion, she couldn’t keep but push herself hard, using another two Spectre Bursts and a liberal use of her Alacrity-aligned mana to dance through the swarming beasts. They were weak for their level, relying on numbers and the compounding of many individuals’ magic to pose a threat. Astrid only slowed when her mana dropped below a fifth, using one more charge of Body and leaving herself with only a single charge as she tore through the remnants. 

When 10 remained, Skandr exhibited his own frustration through a storm falling on the group of beasts. Gale force winds smashed every one of the monsters to the ground, where Muti, Astrid, and Felix finished them off. Before long, the five stood together, ignoring the dozens of dead bodies that surrounded them. Astrid couldn’t help but relax just a little as she realized she didn’t feel nearly so exhausted as before. A quick glance at her Status reminded her as to why her party had decided to stay on the floor for a while:

Status

Name: Astrid 

Class: Immortal Warrior (Iron)

Total Level: 27 (1,812/80,000)

Attributes

Current

Per level growth

Power

192 (+44)

+12

Alacrity

130 (+27) [+59]

+9

Fortitude

193 (+59)

+12

Magical Potency

53 (+19)

+4

Self-Mastery

61 (+34)

+5

Acumen

54 (+4)

+4

Muti remained about 30,000 experience ahead of Astrid herself, and was the member of the party closest to level 28. She’d get her Skill options presented soon, though there was no telling when the next swarm of vampires would appear to grant any more experience. Already, the party had encountered about 100 of the Iron tier monsters without going more than a kilometer from where they entered to the floor. Despite the twenty-ninth floor’s purpose being a location where swarms of lesser vampires were everywhere to be found, there needed to be a limit as to how dense their population could be. With that in mind, Astrid turned to Muti.

“Do you have any idea why the Kin decided to attack us?”

“They were not attacking us, or even me until I stood my ground,” Muti answered. “I would guess that their intention was to drive us away from the vampires so that they could take the experience for themselves. Perhaps they thought that, since we had spoken more gently with them in the past, we would give up and allow them to trod upon us. If they had realized you would treat their attempt at driving us off as a declaration of battle, I expect that they would have engaged with me with a greater deadly intent much faster.”

Astrid fought to reframe her thoughts about what had happened and asked, “That first attack, the claws that cut through the air, that was aimed at the vampires, not at any of us?”

“Correct.”

“Even so, I don’t care,” Felix made his opinion known once again. “They decided to make themselves our enemies, and we came out on top of this fight.”

“Do not lose yourself to self-aggrandizement,” Muti chastised. “They did not engage with the intent to kill until Astrid did. She was able to engage on an equal ground with their leader, but he was not being strengthened by either of their mages, both of whom appear to specialize in supportive spells or Skills. If they had been granting their strength to him, it would have been a different fight. Now, they will be prepared for Astrid’s Skills next time. We have made enemies with them,, but we have also proven our competence and our willingness to bare our teeth. Do not grow complacent, though we were the victors of this fight.”

Astrid felt her shoulders tense up at the thought of having true enemies here in the Trials. Yes, Caelum the Count was a lurking danger, but he was the only “danger” from people that Astrid could firmly anticipate until now. The Verdant Walkers they had spoken with were friendly enough and even the Barbarians that had extended an invitation to Muti and thus couldn’t be considered anything other than strong competition. The Hiveguard… well, they seemed like they might be friendly, more than anything. Now, though, Astrid had possibly permanently maimed one or two fighters for the enemy’s party. There would be no kind feelings remaining between them from here on.

“How’s everyone holding up?” Astrid asked the question and looked specifically at the two men who’d spent their reserves overzealously. Felix grunted without any real answer, while Skandr did have the decency to look a little abashed.

“I hesitated to do anything against them,” he said as an explanation. “I know we’ve fought against other people who want us dead. They died because of it. I didn’t kill them. I hesitated, and I hesitate now, to kill people. Even if they want me dead.”

Despite her own bloodthirst and willingness to issue a command to kill, Astrid couldn’t bring herself to disagree with or even feel unhappy about Skandr’s declaration. He didn’t want to kill people. She didn’t either, that was why she was a delver instead of a soldier. 

“That is weak.” Muti’s words cut through the brief quiet in the group. They each sat on their haunches and rested, but she didn’t speak with malice as she laid the accusation down. “You have entered the Dungeon to fight alongside us. You have saved all of our lives with your spells and your diligence. Are you saying that you cannot be trusted if our enemies have Classes? There will be plenty of those, and I would know if you can be trusted to save my life.”

Skandr’s jaw worked as he fought down the fury that obviously surged through him at Muti’s words. Astrid couldn’t agree with her sentiment, but she also couldn’t bring herself to entirely disagree either. Several painful seconds passed, and finally, Skandr bowed his head.

“You’re right. We know there’re enemies on every side, and only some of them are formed of mana in the Dungeon. That’s why I was so angry. Angry at myself for my weakness. For my inability to do what I needed to!” Skandr stood and began pacing as he spoke. “I know I messed up, and I hate that! But I don’t know if I’ll freeze up again, because I don’t want to hurt people.”

Benedict stood up in solidarity behind Skandr. “I don’t want to kill people either. When I saw Caustic Bard, I only thought about killing monsters. When I saw that Kin’s ears and nose begin to bleed from me, I felt sick.”

“We came here to compete against these people,” Felix spoke up. “I think we all knew that this wasn’t just likely but an eventuality. This was absolutely going to happen.”

“And I didn’t think about what that would mean,” Skandr retorted. “I know, it’s stupid for me to say that, but it’s true. I want to say I’ll be better next time. I’m going to do everything I can to do that. But I might fail. And I’m sorry.”

The party went quiet after that, nobody feeling the need to rehash the conversations that felt more and more common as they had them. Instead, Astrid allowed everyone a couple minutes to gather themselves and then asked, “how long do you all need to get back to fighting? Because I think I can taste level 28, and today’s the day.”

Everybody in the party looked at each other, and after a few seconds, each seemed to come to their own conclusions. They nodded, though Astrid could easily tell that this wasn’t going to be something so simple to overcome. For now, though, she would push the party ever deeper.